This thesis contributes to the literature on EU studies by analysing how and why the European Union adopted a new trade agenda in the mid-1990s that departed from previous policies. While the EU was focused largely on its internal market from the mid-1980s onwards, external trade strategy became a key item on the agenda a decade later, wrapped in a more aggressive and free-market stance. I argue that the European Commission rather than the EU member-states was the key player in the decade that followed the signature of the Uruguay Round, and introduced services into trade negotiations. More precisely, based on empirical data from the years when Leon Brittan (1994-1999) and Pascal Lamy (1999-2004) presided as EU Trade Commissioners, the thesis analyses the European Commission’s central role as a skilful ‘network creator’ both in pushing for, and legitimising, an expansion of the free-trade agenda from goods to services. However, this research also argues that the Commission did not act alone, and that different kinds of non-state actors must also be analysed in order to understand changing EU trade governance at the dawn of the 21st century.